Things fall into place

Image source: http://tinyurl.com/2353vye

Things today have felt a bit like they are falling into place.

I mentioned in a previous post about Marianne Cantwell's Escape Your Corporate Cage career course that I had enrolled on, after things failed to take off for me with the similar Screw Work, Let's Play programme.  This Tuesday will be the second teleclass of the program, and I have been working on my accompanying worksheets.

The first set had me start with imagining my dream life -- not so hard to do, it involved things like writing and living near the sea and working from home.  I came a little unstuck around having to come up with a kind of project the first week -- I just drew a blank.  Like with Screw Work, Let's Play and the book's "Play Wednesdays", it should be something that's fun to do and you enjoy and would ideally form a part of your ideal life.  It's pretty sad when you can't think of anything.

To try and make some progress, and because it comes highly recommended by Ms Cantwell and John Williams, I took the Wealth Dynamics test.  I voiced some reservations at first.  In some ways it isn't too dissimilar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator -- that I took last year when I was out of work, and has no scientific validity its profiling.  While I wasn't assured of any kind of scientific validity to it, I was told that it would help with supporting me on the course if I did know what my WD profile is.

I wasn't exactly surprised when -- $100 later -- of the 8 personality profiles, I turned up the "creator".  I'd read that most people guess their profiles wrong before they take the test, but I would have been very surprised had mine turned up anything other than that.  Recently at work we were giving interviewees psychometric tests, to rate their scores in various aspects, such as creativity and organisation.  I scored off the chart for creativity.

Considering I score so highly for creativity, I was a little disheartened that my muse was absent when I wanted to think of something to do.  I could think of my plans and free range career options, just not some little thing I could do for a taste of it.

Fortunately, today that has all changed.  I have worked through my worksheets for week 2, and was required to outline 3 or 4 ideas for my free range career.  My ideas were as follows:

1. Writing childrens books, in particular books about a naughty zebra who won't do things like have a bath or get ready for bed.  Why a zebra?  I just like them, and while I like things like Bongos and Zedonks more, they are a little obscure for childrens books.

2. An adventure sport company that benefits local communities.  It's an idea I have written on here about before, and it's a fairly simple concept.

3. Feature writer.  Essentially, I write about what I am passionate about.  In this case, I plan to talk to passionate and inspiring people and write about them.

I was then required to eventually narrow down my ideas to just one I am going to pursue for now.  It was hard. It was extremely bloody hard.  I wasn't worried so much about choosing the wrong thing, but I didn't want to not pursue something I was excited about.  In the end, I have decided that my third option gives me all of the elements I want most for my free range lifestyle, and can work other parts into it.

Starting immediately I am going to make contact with people I want to interview for my features.  Since I promised this year I would contact Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage, they can be the start -- and my meeting now will be less "Can we have tea?" but more "I'd like to talk to you about your work".

I am excited and enthused to be starting on this -- the Zebra books can wait a little while.  I'm so excited I am ignoring that I have to go to work tomorrow, because this is really what my life is about...

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine

During lunch recently, I was asked by a customer if my company was non-profit.  I had to stop myself from laughing when I told him "Not through choice".  What I dislike about working in sales is how I am encouraged to feel responsible for if the company is making money or not, like how when as a team we are told that sales needs to bring in about £100k before the end of the year if the company is going to avoid making a loss.  The direct implication being: work harder.  It's your fault if the company doesn't make a profit.

A few months back, when I went to the open mike poetry in Shoreditch park, I read a piece about "Gross Domestic Happiness", and the idea of it being a business model -- so, like the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, success was measured by happiness rather than by profit.  It was a very clumsy analogy, and not a very good poem either -- but I still entertain sometimes the idea of a company whose sole aim is to make people happy, the customers and the employees.

A colleague of mine recently left the sales team, and it was quite sad.  She wasn't happy working in sales, which was fair enough -- it's not for everyone, and probably not ultimately for me, either.  Her mistake, though, was to let on.  As soon as she mentioned that she needed a reference for some unpaid voluntary position she was applying for, things turned sour.  Suddenly she was having to have meetings and being told her performance wasn't up to scratch and that the company valued loyalty. In the end, she chose to quit shortly after a meeting where she was presented with evidence from google that had found her posting on an online message board about her plans for working abroad next year.  The whole thing didn't make anybody very happy.

I've been writing on and off about the proposed new opportunity for me in the company.  A chance to be creative and to get away from telemarketing.  I felt flattered that the boss would take into consideration what I was good at and what I would enjoy.  When interviewing new candidates for the sales team recently, we even made oblique references to it -- pay the company with loyalty and stick things through and they will pay you back.

Except this week I've learned that's not the case at all.  We had a team meeting yesterday to discuss our targets for next year and the changes that the hiring of new staff will bring, as well as the sales manager's impending maternity leave.  I was told that the new job we had been discussing for weeks or months is going to be put on hold for now.  It seems that all the talk before was really just talk.  The year ahead is going to be a complicated one, with roles in the team changing and our responsibilities increasing to take on more managerial and mentoring roles.  But still with the main focus on telemarketing.

Don't get me wrong, I shouldn't really complain.  The job has afforded me a lot of luxuries in recent months, and the next year will bring a small payrise, along with higher targets which bring with them higher earnint potential.  Just the same, when what I wanted was to be appreciated for what I am good at, it feels like a kick in the teeth.

After the class and program with Screw Work Let's Play didn't work out recently, I have jumped at the chance for something similar -- an intensive, 21 day program designed for creative people who are tired of jobs, offices and only living for the weekends.  Maybe that's all of us, but I don't want to spend another year just complaining about it -- I don't expect a miracle, but I am hoping to take away from it something to get me doing what I love, and getting paid for it.  Check it out yourself: Escape Your Corporate Cage.

I guess that's where we find me this week.  Let down, beaten up, overworked and disheartened, but perhaps in just the right place to start something to break me out of my rusty cage.